The ending thing is a good idea, but again... only if you are having a dificult time with your movie.

Dreaming up your ending only... could possably change your entire movie all together. Again, making it to where you will simply look for a direct like from A-B-C... try to think your movie out as if it were running on film.

Make it make sense. Make it work.

Again, I'm not saying I'm right and anyone of you are wrong... but however, SAMURI is really asking questions that will help him out and help him understand the craft better.

Try not to get to deep with it all. I was lost with alot of what you guys said back about 5 post ago.. LOL

Anyway, there is no right way to make your movie. Try everything you can to make it work and everyone of these guys idea's are very good and very workable.

If you are trying to get your movie off the ground... try the index card system 1st and foremost.

Balt.

"Start with and ending and write like hell to get there" - Don't know who said that.

Meaning that if you know clearly where you are going it will be easier to get there.

If you are just wandering as you go along you are bound to get lost and the reader will know it.

Sometimes writing down the idea you have on a seperate wordpad helps. That's what i've begin doing for "Spider-man 3" and "Hontubby Weedwahcker Incident" it really helps me remember what i'm trying to achieve.  I hate usuing index cards myself so I usually make a seperate Wordpad just for notes I have gathered for a certain subject so i can go back and write the script from that.

^^^^^^^^^^^^

Also a great idea... however... many like to have and hold their respected ideas in front of them on paper.

I myself, print out every screenplay I've ever written... I've got 4 drafts of each screenplay sitting on my scripting shelf.

Also, I've been to quite a few plays, having lived in new york, and i have noticed that the plays, (not musicals, plays) usually have a imagery sort of prelude, or theme that changes. aka: DEATH OF A SALESMAN begins with curiosity and search for truth, and it ends with the uneasy, unaccceptable, hard to deal with truth.  I've looked over movies, and most of 'em end this way.  THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, my favorite movie of all time, uses this in the character of tuco.  towards the beginning he's about to be hanged, but saved by "The Man with no Name"  who apprently actually does have a name: Monco, which, curiously enough, is my name.)  and they go off with the money.  and the movie ends with him about to be hanged, and he escapes by himself, and the two go their seperate ways.

I just always wonder how other people get from start to finish with scripts...do you have a general idea of beginning, middle, and end?  Do you outline?  Or do you just have a really cool scene thought up and base a movie around it (not the best idea...)?

Sorry if I ask too many questions---seems like I'm the only one.

-'samurai

I do both, I sometimes start off with just a really cool scene and other times like my hero script I set up an 8 page elaborate storyline to show myself if it'll work

have you posted the script you did the outline for? I'd like to read it

I start with a concept and work from there.
Usually I'll draft an outline and treatment - while writing the first draft.

For me it just depends. Biohazard was just written on the fly, which is how I write all adaptations. I figure that if I don't plan it the only things I'll include are what I remembered from the game/book/whatever, so it's obviously important to the story. For others, like JTD, I spent about a year before I even began writing.

hmm....I plan on writing a scriptment or something to that effect....so I dont screw up.

A rough idea and vision of how it'd all be in the end of things and then write it backwards and forwards and anyway you can from there.

I went at my shorts for W.A.L.S.T.I.B. very, "start-middle-end" however, the wrap around hub to all 3 movies was a motherbitch to figure out and make work within' the context of the stories at hand. It was tough stuff to pull all 3 "walstib" movies together.

Writing is something that is a time effort, you can't make a masterpiece overnight, some can I suppose, but me and many others, LOL, no... not a chance.

I like writing general idea's down on paper and then weeding out the bad ones from the good ones and then trying to fit all them idea's into a movie I'd like to see in theaters.

That's how I write and I'm by no means brilliant or even slightly intellegent... I lift weights and train people for a living, that's what I do... So maybe take the advice of someone who is more in touch with their mental powers than me, LOL

C.K.

good thoughts~

I haven't posted my hero script but with my 8 page outline it was so easy to write act 1, I just zoomed through it with ease and I got a writer who I respect to read the first act as it was and he really liked it. He didn't understand a couple thing because it wasn't a full script or anything but still said it was the beginning to something good

I like it as well but when it comes to my own work i seem to be my own worst enemy or critic and usually that's why I don't post very many screenplays

As in my new series, 2 episodes are done and I haven't posted either

Lately, I seem to use this method:
I usually have an idea about something at a very inconvenient time. I'll let it stew in my head for quite awhile (I'm talking days here). If I can't think of anything else or expand the idea, I'll write it down for another time. If, in my mind, I get excited about the idea and I can expand on it then I'll start writing it down.

Then for a few days I'll add stuff to it and then leave it for bit. I'll go back to it and if it still excites me then I know I have something to work with. I work all day, and I'm on call for after hours and weekends, so my writing is usually done in spurts. There will be a week where I will write non-stop, then another week when it'll be only an hour or so.

I'll finish a draft, take some time off and go back and start making changes. After a few drafts, it'll be ready for showing someone. Then I'll take their review and see if I can make any positive changes to the script.

It can take a couple of months for me to complete a script. As Balt says, I can't write something in week, let alone a day.

If it's a serious project then I'll go into extensive planning.

My upcoming project - "The Silent Treatment" is going into a year of preplaning, character analyzations, treatments, and drafting before I even begin on the first draft.